The Gilded Age Is Back
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

“Gossip Girl,” the new series on the CW starting Wednesday, September 19, begins, much like Edith Wharton’s novel, “The House of Mirth,” with a beautiful young woman being spotted at Grand Central Station at a time when she is thought to be out of town.
“Selden paused in surprise,” Wharton wrote in the opening lines of her novel. “In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station, his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.”
In “Gossip Girl,” it’s Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) who makes a surprise appearance at New York’s most fabled train station. It’s a little different this time, however. Whereas Selden invites Lily for a cup of tea, Melanie 91, the creepy-looking thing who spots Serena, merely snaps her picture — surreptitiously, using her cell phone — and then forwards the image to the anonymous host of the Web site from which “Gossip Girl” takes its name.
“Hey Upper East Siders,” says the unseen actress Kristen Bell in the role of Gossip Girl’s Web mistress as we watch Serena — tall, blonde, and decked out in a suede jacket over a striped blouse, traipse through the terminal — “Gossip Girl here. I have the biggest news ever. One of my many sources, Melanie 91, sends us this: Spotted at Grand Central, bags in hand, Serena van der Woodsen.”
Before long, the photo of Serena is online, complete with Gossip Girl’s commentary, and is being furiously text-messaged back and forth by the members of Serena’s Upper East Side prep school set, from which she has been mysteriously absent for a year, having decided for reasons unknown to all but a few to attend a boarding school in Connecticut.
Wharton’s novel, published in 1905 but set in the 1870s, was a caustic indictment of the heartlessness of New York’s upper class. Selden may not be sneaking around taking pictures of people with a cell phone (he couldn’t, of course), but his interest in Lily, like that of Melanie 91, is essentially that of a “spectator” — detached, somewhat chilly, and amused.
Perhaps it’s ridiculous to bring up Wharton when discussing “Gossip Girl,” which is based on a popular series of books for teenagers racy and materialistic enough to cause consternation even at Entertainment Weekly. On the other hand, when you consider the old New York names of some of the characters — Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, Nate Archibald — perhaps not. In its way, it’s the same old world of wealth and privilege, only one in which the gleeful news of who’s in and who’s out travels via text messaging rather than hansom.
When I first watched the pilot episode of “Gossip Girl,” I found that opening scene powerfully repellent, and thought there was a fair amount of social criticism to be found throughout the episode itself, along with the inevitable celebration of just how great it is to come of age when you’re young, beautiful, and really rich. (The series was created by Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz, the creator of “The O.C.,” which did something similar for the sunbronzed kids of California’s Orange County.)
But perhaps this is a misinterpretation. What looks like an invasion of privacy to someone who didn’t grow up with MySpace may look very different to someone who did. Namely the pleasure, even when you’re just a schoolgirl, of having your every step followed and reported on as if you were a celebrity on the order of Paris Hilton. My guess is that the creators of “Gossip Girl” want it both ways, and the result is an uncertainty of tone — part soapy teenage drama, part social critique.
The person most disturbed by the news of Serena’s re-emergence is Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), supposedly her best friend but all too aware that her dreamboat boyfriend, Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), is secretly in love with Serena. Far more pleased by Serena’s arrival is someone she loathes — Chuck Bass, Nate’s pal and a self-styled dandy and libertine who requires a steady stream of emotional turmoil, along with pot, alcohol, and prescription drugs, to keep him from expiring of ennui before he reaches the tender age of 20. Naturally, he’s the most interesting character in the program, and Ed Westwick, the British actor who plays him with a wonderfully louche touch, gets your attention every time he appears on screen.
Representing the Lower Depths (or at least the Lower East Side), even though they’re attending private school uptown, are Dan and Jenny Humphrey (Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen) — son and daughter, respectively, of a rock musician dad who was a name in the ’90s but has been reduced to stapling news of his upcoming gigs on lampposts. Dan, who could pass as the brother of the tennis player Andy Roddick, is treated as a non-person by Chuck, Nate, and the rest of the school’s hip coterie, due to his dubious downtown origins. He did once briefly win a smile of recognition from Serena, however, and even after a year he’s still carrying a torch for her, not that he expects it to burst into flame.
As it happens, luck is on his side, and Serena smiles upon him once more. Most of the opening episode is taken up with the repercussions of her return to school after her hiatus in Connecticut, particularly her face-off with “best friend” Blair, brunette to her blonde, and jealous guardian of precious, vacuous Nate. But it ends with Dan and Serena on an accidental date, the union of uptown with down, and a lot of Cinderella touches.
Like “The O.C.,” “Gossip Girl” has a busy soundtrack, loads of youthful energy, some appealing characters, at least one good villain, and an intriguing social milieu. Whether that will be enough to keep grown-ups interested, however, will probably depend on how much soap is mixed in with the drama.
Certainly the teenage WASPs and other rich kids on display in “Gossip Girl” are miles apart from the slightly older, ironic, witty, sheepishly self-effacing types found in the wonderful trilogy of films, beginning with 1990s “Metropolitan,” made by Whit Stillman, though the geographical territory inhabited by both sets of characters is identical. Being wealthy, or coming from an old New York family, or inhabiting the same ZIP code as all those decreasingly funny Woody Allen movies, is nothing to be embarrassed (or defiant) about in “Gossip Girl.” The message of the series is: The Gilded Age is back!